AI News, Robot drummer posts pictures of jamming sessions on Facebook

Robot drummer posts pictures of jamming sessions on Facebook

The study, by researchers at Queen Mary University of London, looks at how humans interact with robots over time and in particular how social media can enhance that relationship.

The researchers contend that music can provide this engagement and developed a robotic drummer, called Mortimer, who is able to compose music responsively to human pianists in real-time.

To help trigger a sense of believability, the researchers extended Mortimer's capabilities to allow him to take pictures during sessions and post them with a supporting comment to Facebook while also tagging the keyboard player.

Lead author Louis McCallum, from Queen Mary's School of Electronic Engineering and Computer Science, said: 'We'd previously uncovered new and exciting findings that suggested open-ended creative activities could be a strong bedrock to build long-term human-robot relationships.

This particular research sought to examine whether the relationships that were initially developed face-to-face, but under lab conditions, could be extended to the more open, but virtual, realm of social media.'

Co-author of the study Professor Peter McOwan added: 'There are signs of high engagement, such as high self-reported repeat interaction, across all participants that strengthen previous results about the use of music as a good base for improving long-term human-robot relationships.